Winning in the Age of Bohonomics

Archive for the category “visions”

How to handle decision making in the management teams? In many companies’ management and leadership processes seem to work well, but suddenly something surprising happens. In spite of many cross-checks and meetings, things turn into a non-expected direction. All think that everything was in place … but then something emerges and business plans are outdated in a day. Why this happens?

It is typical than there are always some biases in management teams of companies. It is typical that for individuals it is not easy to make question marks on official agreements and strategies. Even though all nod in agreement and look happy it is not easy to say something critical. “It was settled” or “we all agreed” are typical notes on the memos of companies in this kind of decision situations.

Raising dissenting voice is not easy – especially when the chief boss decides something. It is much easier to be among “yes-sayers” than among “critical questioning men”. Self-fulfilling prophecy is the tendency to engage in behaviors that elicit results that will (consciously or subconsciously) confirm our beliefs. “Yes men” cause self-fulfilling prophecies. There can be also a halo effect, the tendency for a person’s positive or negative traits to “spill over” from one area of their personality to another in others’ perceptions of them.

In many case studies of management processes, some typical mistakes have been identified. First, there is tendency to devote attention only to those events seen as most likely. Secondly, once the team of decision makers had made up its mind as to what was going to happen, even conclusive information that the decision was poor did not change the prediction and associated decision. Thus there is typically a problem of groupthink in management teams. One reason for this problem is homogenous social and cultural backgrounds.

Often management teams have similar backgrounds: university degree holders, men with similar hobbies, career paths, middle-class people, and homogenous values. False consensus effect means the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them. Sometimes there can be anchoring decision-making biases, where there is the tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor,” on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.

Another problematic issue in management teams is overcoming overconfidence. The future looks assured for them. Their judgments are made with deep confidence. However, people may feel confident that they do know the right answer but actually don´t. They don´t know they don´t know. Other options of knowing are: (1) They do know they know; (2) they don´t know they do know and (3) they do know they don´t know. Obviously the best option would be to know that they know. In reality this option is not often available for a management team.

Third typical bias of a management team is a confirmation bias. What it means? It means that we don´t place ourselves in situations where we can test the quality of our judgment. We want to seek that information that will confirm the quality of our predictions and decisions. It is quite human character of people, wanting to be in right – winning team. In this way we are selective in our observations.

Fourth bias in management teams, is so called hindsight bias, which is connected to our readiness not learn from experiences. In general, we don´t learn from experience because experience has little to teach us. That is why our recollections of our judgmental predictions confirm these to have been accurate. Some call this bias “I-know-it-all-along-effect”. Thus, our judgments are rooted to history and it cause biases to emerge.

Fifth bias can emerge because we rely on expert predictions too much. We can call this bias as an expert bias. Also experts can cause group thinking bias and other people may suffer from this kind of bias. There are many other kinds of biases, too like randomness bias, sunk-cost bias, self-serving bias and escalation and commitment bias. Projection bias is close expert opinion bias. It is the tendency to unconsciously assume that others share the same or similar thoughts, beliefs, values, or positions.

Sixth bias, randomness bias means that there is a tendency people have to seek patterns where none exist and to invent the existence of unjustified causal relationships. It is the tendency of people to make sense out of events which are so random in nature that not enough should be read into them. Close to randomness bias is Gambler´s fallacy, the tendency to assume that individual random events are influenced by previous random events.

Seventh type of bias, sunk-cost bias is often connected to too optimistic thinking. Sunk-costs are costs that cannot be recovered once they have been incurred. Sunk-costs bias greatly affects the decisions, because humans are inherently loss aversive and thus normally act irrationally when making economic decisions.

Eight type of bias, self-serving bias occurs when people attribute their successes to internal or personal factors but attribute their failures to situational factors beyond their control. The term, “self-serving bias”, is used to describe a pattern of biased causal inference, in which praise or blame depend on whether success or failure was achieved in reality.

Ninth type bias, escalation and commitment bias means tendency to invest additional resources in an apparently losing proposition, influenced by effort, money, and time already invested. The term is also used to describe poor decision-making in business, government, information systems in general. Escalations and commitment biases are typical in software project management, in politics, and in addictive gambling. To sum up: there are 9 key sources of bias in management teams:

It is good to be aware of these potential decision making biases in decision making situations. We could avoid these typical biases, if we were aware of these potential biases. The lessons from history can tell us that many management teams do not identify these biases and serious management failures happen. A sad truth is that we don’t always learn from experiences. There are very many historical lessons available for decision makers but we should learn something from these old lessons. From this perspective “learning organization” is a modern myth.

There is need to question some issues (and biases) in many management teams. That why bohemian persons and “out of box” thinkers may be very valuable members in management teams. It is easy to say that we should be free of biases, but in reality we are often slaves of biases and fallacies. Only personal and critical reflections can help us to be free from these biases. Open and critical discussions in management teams should be encouraged and supported too. Daily illusions about effective control should be avoided in all the decision-making situations and processes.

Financial Times Lexicon defines hypercompetition in a following way: ”A situation in which there is a lot of very strong competition between companies, markets are changing very quickly, and it is easy to enter a new market, so that it is not possible for one company to keep a competitive advantage for a long time”. (See http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=hypercompetition). Many economists have noted that hypercompetition leads markets to unstable conditions. Theories of general equilibrium in markets and automatic stabilization of markets do not hold, if markets are in unstable conditions. Richard A. D’aveni introduced this concept to scientific discussion of company and corporate theories. His book “Hypercompetition” is a classic book in the international management literature. One key statement of his book was that competitive advantage can no longer be sustained.

Hypercompetition results from the dynamics of strategic maneuvering amongst many competitors. It is the condition of rapid escalation of competition based on price-quality positioning.

Corporations and companies want to use other tools to compete under conditions of hypercompetition. They do not want to start price wars. In such conditions corporations want to be Cost & Quality (C-Q)-leaders or followers. They may want to create Timing and Know-How (T-K)-Value chains and build new efficiencies. In some case they may rely on Strongholds (S)-Core or on Distinctive Competencies. Deep pockets strategy is based on the availability of financial capital. (see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/archetype/archive/2006/07/24/677222.aspx).

To escape disastrous price wars, modern companies try to occupy different locations on the price like brand strategies, offering mass customization, quality axis, using micro-marketing, and shifting strategies based on the changing anatomy of industry trends.

To sum up, new arenas of hypercompetition are:

Cost & Quality (C-Q),

Timing and Know-How (T-K),

Strongholds (S), and

Deep pockets (D).

Hypercompetition is emphasized on several occasions – in particular, in the creative economy in the context of organizational development. Success is based on the fast changes in hypercompetitive business environment. Agents and leaders must change rapidly and understand and internalize weak signals in their decision environment. For a company to stay alive and competitive it must very innovative. It mean that a company delivers novel and advanced products and services for which there is little or no equal in the marketplace. Commodity differentiation and branding are key aspects of hypercompetition. Hypercompetition is focused on is new ideas, inventions and innovations.

Now many experts have started discuss about hybrid economy. What is hybrid economy? How it is connected to hypercompetition? A hybrid economy is any type of local, state, or national economic system that involves a more or less equal focus on two or more different types of economy.

This hybrid economy model is a relatively common structure that has been utilized in many different settings over the history of humankind. For example, in traditional agricultural society there were exchange and storage economies. Some examples of a hybrid economy may include a creative economy, a military-industrial based economy, a university-industry based economy, or hybrid economy based primarily on a mix of business and government. Thus, there are various forms of hybrid economy. New forms of hybrid economy include typically e-business and internet economics.

These forms of hybrid economies are not fitting well to pure exchange mechanisms of market economy. The reason for the existence of hybrid economies is that they promote stable systemic mechanisms than market economy or unstable hypercompetition. The element of public good is typical for hybrid economies. We can even claim that in the future we need more elements of hybrid economies to make capitalism work better. If we want that capitalism delivers benefits and positive values to everyone, there is need to develop more innovative patterns for the hybrid economy. New forms of hybrid economy can also include dynamic elements of social innovation.

The transition to a hybrid model of competition does not mean that the market would disappear, and markets would not be relevant for transaction mechanisms. This is something that should be emphasized. Also hybrid economy is based on competition. Hybrid competition is a very important new element in the global hypercompetition. Hybrid competition is also connected to good governance systems and to trust of democratic agencies and institutions.

We can take a number of reasons why the hybrid competition has risen and continues to rise as an important part of people´s and organizations´ wealth creation processes:

• Globalisation and its associated cultural interactions;

• The penetration of the Internet and related digital networking;

• Digital technology innovations (Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 etc.);

• Pressures and unstable processes of the hypercompetition;

• Ubiquitous r/evolution, the Internet of Things and other digital forms of evolution like Cloud Computing and Big Data), and

The global economy means a new division of labor in the world. Workplaces are lost in some countries and regions and in some other places people are creating new jobs.

Frequently asked question is what kind of new work places can be created after old work places are lost? One obvious answer is: “Something else”. People have always developed something else after the loss of permanent jobs. The big problem is that it may take too much time to find new jobs, if we do not make systemic changes to the postmodern societies.

If we rely only on the hypercompetition and market mechanism, our societies will be very unstable and cause a lot of social losses. If we really can develop new social innovations and new forms of hybrid economy, we can expect that social and economic transition processes will be faster, less unstable and cause less welfare losses.

Today we must allow multiple stakeholders to negotiate over how to attain a desirable future. Developing new innovative forms of hybrid economy will require new forms of dialogue and debates. The only option is not unstable hypercompetition, which mostly delivers benefits of exchange and markets unethically and unequally.

It is worth of underlining that people create their economies and systems of governance. It is worth of noting that in capitalism people are allowed to think freely. These two things are relevant if we want to save capitalism and re-invent it as a dynamic form of global governance.

Serendipity is not a new concept, because Horace Walpole committed the word serendipity to paper for the first time about 250 years ago. Horace Walpone said he formed the concept from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip. In the book, three successful princes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of”. Today serendipity is widely accepted concept with 5 670 000 hits in a 0,20 second in the Google (evaluated 11.6.2012).

Serendipity means a “happy accident” or “pleasant surprise”. Serendipity is an accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it. It is not easy to see when serendipity is really happening, because it is not easy to define when human behavior unintentional and things happen like an accident. Thus serendipity is the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident. The concept of serendipity is connected to innovation theory. In innovation research, authors have found that sometimes also innovations are discoveries by accident. If people are very active, sometimes happy accidents really happen.

Only one sure thing in serendipity is that activity of people matter. And proactivity matters even more. If people are active there will more possibilities, more accidental discoveries and more pleasant surprises. Various thinkers discuss the role that good luck can play in science. Good examples are Colombus’ discovery of America, Nobel’s discovery of dynamite and Fleming’s discovery of penicillin. The serendipitous quality of innovation is highly recognized by many professionals of innovation research. It is also linked to the success of corporations and companies to their ability to create knowledge not by processing information but rather by tapping the tacit and often highly subjective intuitions and insights.

The higher the probability of an event is, the more certain we are that the special event will occur. Thus, probability in an applied sense is a measure of the confidence a person has that a random event will occur. Serendipity as a concept is closely connected to the concept of probability. A probable action or opinion was one such as sensible people would undertake or hold, in the special circumstances. Typically happy accidents have a low probability level. If an event has a high probability level, it is not a happy accident, it is an expected event. If there are some intentions behind an event, it is not a serendipity issue.

So intentionality is typically a elementary part of strategic and visionary thinking. Serendipity is relevant in such a business environment where agents do not have special intentions – they just act without intentions. They just act somehow and try to survive. From this perspective the concept of serendipity is an evolutionary concept.

An interesting question is whether a corporate or small company can do serendipity management and also have some strategies and vision, which are intentional ones. My personal answer is: Why not? If some things cannot be planned properly, why try to do these things with stress and lose much scarce resources? It is not worth of try too much. It is good to work like an ameba. Better way to success is to be relaxed and give serendipity a free room in organizations, whether they are small companies or large corporations. This kind of free and flexible organization can be called an ameba organization.

In the future many organizations will find this kind of flexible ameba organization a good solution when they operate in the multiverse. The term “multiverse” was coined in 1895 by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. The multiverse or meta-universe is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes that together comprise everything that exists and can exist: the entirety of space, time, matter, and energy as well as the physical laws and constants that describe them.

New technology will make multiverse a very relevant concept. In the future technological development with ubiquitous technology, nanotechnology, robotics and material technology change our relation to time, space and matter. This process will lead us to different realms of multiverse. There will be 8 realms of multiverse: Reality as such, augmented reality, physical virtuality, mirrored virtuality, warped reality, alternative reality, augmented virtuality and virtuality.

Multiverse will create for us infinite possibility for serendipity and ameba organizations. Business gurus B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore have noted in their updated book “the Experience Economy”, that work will be theatre and every business is a stage. This is a working principle of serendipity management.

The governments’ answer is that we need to rise the age of retirement and invest in healthcare. But that is not the answer we hear from Professor Roy. Whilst he does not deny the need for the action presented by the governments he says that the most important question we must ask is “what are people doing during their at least 20 years of life post retirement”. Prof. Roy repeats “don’t look at people’s ages look at what they do and what they consume” so many times that you cannot but think that he has a point there. Not only does he say it but he presents an impressive study to support his words. Yes, what he says is truly disruptive – yet so Bohemian: people indeed are not groups of different age categories; they are individuals, consuming and working on different things.

The fingers are often pointed at the Baby Boomers. Younger people say that they are afraid what happens when the Baby Boomers retire. Who is going to pay for their terminal care? Seldom, hardly never, have I heard anybody ask: what will they do on their years of post-retirement?

The Baby Boomers is a most interesting group. They are people who perhaps sacrificed fulfilling their dreams to the common purpose of building great societies, infrastructures, markets and democracies – countries and states where it would be good to live in. And they succeeded. Take Finland for example. From a war-torn wreck of a country to a blooming economy, and in a reasonably short period of time. Many thanks go to the Baby Boomers.

Baby Boomers saw the rise of the Bohemian. They experienced the golden age of the music and movies. On their holidays they travelled to Rostock, Woodstock and Human Be-In. They saw the rise and fall of the Hippie movement. They shared the vision of world peace and contributed to a better world by working in factories to create the wealth that the nations needed to keep up with the development of the markets and social systems. They wanted to see their children educated with better possibilities for good life than they had received in birth.

But the also the hippies are retiring. What will they do? Is the dream still alive and strong? Will they re-invent the movement? Unite to a powerful tribe with flowers in the hair?

From the Boho point of view the Baby Boomers might just be the best thing that is going on in the world. The Baby Boomers are still looking for a chance to start living the dream they once had. The dream where they will make a difference as a human being, as an individual – as a person who does something that has meaning and value. They are one of the key ingredients of the Generation M. M for Movement, a definition by economist Umair Haque. Haque says: “… generation M is a… growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. ” Generation M is obviously the generation of the Modern Bohemians, Bohos, and we believe that a vast number of Baby Boomers are included in this generation. We might as well call them the Late Bloomers. People who make their talent bloom in the late phase of their lives.

There are already learning programs clearly aimed at the Late Bloomers. Such as The Swing which purpose is to teach the world to sing with a target group of Late Bloomers. Surely many of the Baby Boomers wish to make their artistic talent bloom once they have the time and many also the necessary resources.

Yes indeed. The Late Bloomers are a most potential group to make the Boho vision come true. They once helped to build the material world now they can contribute to the mental and spiritual powers of people. As robotization and automation strongly progress the Late Bloomers will be needed as artists, athletes, inventors, leaders, mentors, thinkers, celebrities, philosophers, scientists, role models, supporters, serendipitors, networkers, connectors, authors, readers. Bohemians. Yes we need them mostly as free souls who detach, break loose from the old patterns. People who come out of the closets and boxes, and show that embarrassment is only a stupid word that can be translated as “barrier to creativity”.

Talent is capital for all, not only for the children and the young. Hidden or latent talent can be awakened at any age and also turned into economic activity and – why not – a career. In fact we need to do so in order not only to help the retirees to enjoy a good life but also to help create a new competitive edge for nations, companies and entrepreneurs.

Bohemian persons are often feeling otherness, and often they feels they are in some way misunderstood. A bohemian, who do not fit the typical “average” category, has many challenges and problems, because this “average” category is considered in many organizations the only right category. Many talented people have to deal with the fringes of society in order to realize their dreams and visions.

In many cases bohemians are neglected because of “work place democracy”. However, we know that the limitations of democracy lie in the moral, and even spiritual, quality of the electorate. A democracy is as good as its people and tends to promote a moral and cultural mediocrity. One paradox of today is that modern democratic society seems to be characterized by a rising tide of trivia and empty entertainment. Ordinary citizens may want more, but also bohemians want more, much more.

For many organizations it is typical that they allow the bold thinking only in specific circumstances. Courage to break with can be taken in general in the context of “development Days”, “creativity workshops” or “spring assembly events”. On other days of a year bohemian experts will be “hippies”, “nerds” and “persons with propeller hats”. They are the ones all other in the “organizational chart” can laugh at good will. For a bohemian it is typical that they are not taken particularly seriously or other experts underestimate their performances.

When one talks about bohemians, there are often presented different characterizations of a bohemian person. Typical classifications for bohemians are:

These characterizations are certainly in the right direction to characterize the bohemian tribe. In the reality, however, bohemians can be found from very different social and ethnic origins. Bohemians may be both men and women, as well as a bohemian can also be found in different age groups. Actually, there is no single psychological standard definition for the bohemian people. Bohemians are special kinds of people who also want emphasize the specificity of their own.

Bohemian man can be extroverted, but there are also inward-looking bohemians, not so expressive. Bohemian people work very often in creative professions and have broad innovative potential of the toughest technical and social applications. Art, science, sports, and economic life are attractive fields of life for bohemians. Bohemians can provide creative contributions to these important areas of life.

A bohemian is a person who is often not suitable for the average person’s profile. Bohemians often want to consciously stand out from the masses and have different social contexts and “tribes”. People see and perceive bohemians usually strange – even the difficult people to handle. The authenticity and the inner voice, listening oneself are important things for bohemians. Bohemian people are generally interested in unconventional ideas and novel practices. They are interested in new ideas, inventions and proposals.

Generally, they are often called to invent and re-invent different policy areas and to be pioneers of new ideas and ideologies.
In many organizations, bohemian life style is a challenge and many organizations have difficulties to rigid adapt organizational systems and relationships to bohemian styles. Many corporate organizations and public sector organizations want – consciously or unconsciously – to recruit – not so bohemian employees, who work quietly to make standards things and projects routinely and in a mechanical way like in old industrial organizations. In the future, these types of people and organizations trying to be mechanic robots and robot societies will be easily substituted with robots and new smart technologies.

Many organizations are also such that bohemians cannot easily present their new ideas and take active initiatives on new challenges. Rigid hierarchies and inflexible organizational silos prevent organizations from obtaining access to the best creative human capital. New, bohemian types of organizations are first facing major challenges to do the right thing. If bohemian personalities are allowed to take creative and new roles and flexible job descriptions, they also tend to engage actively in these roles and job descriptions.

Bohemian persons are able to change schemata in the organizations. Schemata, whether plural of schema, are knowledge structures a person forms from past experiences. Bohemian can create new forms of schemata and reformulate old schemata.

Incentive structures of bohemian organizations are different compared with industrial organizations of Taylorism. “Synthesized workflows” approach of Taylorism is not the right approach to create unique products and services. So called “scientific management” must be reformulated, if we want to keep members of creative class inside the box of scientific management. This challenge is not a small one. We must re-define organizational paradigms, control systems, organizational structures, power structures, symbols, organizational rituals and routines. Even stories and myths of organizations must be re-invented.

For many business organizations would do well to think about it they are able to offer reasonable opportunities for bohemian talents to make a special contribution in their organization. Without re-inventing their organizational systems, leadership patterns and management styles this will be a mission impossible. Why organizational cultures develop in organizations is due to external adaptation and internal integration. Bohemian people play a special role both in external adaptation process and internal integration process. That is why bohemians´ role cannot be neglected in the post-modern organizations. External adaptation reflects an evolutionary approach to organizational culture. Internal integration is an important function since social structures are required for organizations to exist. Thus bohemians are key players from the evolutionary and functional organizational perspectives. Bohemians can create strong cultures inside organizations. The “average approach” leads to weak culture. Weak culture means that there is little alignment with organizational values and control must be exercised through extensive procedures and bureaucracy. Strong culture is said to exist where staff respond to stimulus because of their alignment to organizational values.

If the organization’s culture is too “average oriented” and favors “middle of the road” recruitments, bohemians of the creative class do not offer their unique talents to such organizational structures and cultures. In this old-fashioned organizational culture scenario, they will have to seek new dynamic organizations or start-up their own businesses. General and very typical assumption is that the workers should be as robots. This approch will not help to attract bohemian talents, because they do not want to be like robots. Permissiveness, tolerance and deeper cultural understanding of diversity are important issues for organizations that really want to get top experts and keep them in their organizations.

The concept of robotization was presented in 1927. Robotization is the process of turning a human being into a robot. Close synonyms of robotization are mechanization and automation. In the on-going process of robotization humans will be made persons who are machinelike, as in giving responses or performing work. Robotized assembly lines are good examples of robotization. Robotization has not reached saturation point.

Just as William Whyte’s 1956 classic book The Organization Man showed how the organizational ethos of that industrial age permeated every aspect of life, Richard Florida described a society in which the creative ethos is increasingly dominant. The rise of creative class is today´s reality in the global economy. Millions of people are beginning to work and live much as creative types like artists and scientists always have done. This “creative class” is found in a variety of business fields, art to science, research to development, biotech to education, from engineering to theater, and architecture to small business. In this way the scale and scope of bohemian cultures is broadening. In the future, members of the creative class will determine how workplaces are organized, what companies will prosper or go bankrupt, and even which cities will thrive or wither. Bohemians of the creative class are really important social group. Our mind sights, core values, tastes, our personal relationships, our choices of where to live, and even our sense and use of time are changing radically.

Now robotization is coming to other business and societal areas, to more complex work tasks, even to the works of creative class. For example, robotization of war and robotization of many welfare health services are going on. In the field of information technology applications, ubiquitous technologies make robotization more intensive and fast. Robots will be combinations of hardware and software. Ubiquitous technologies combine hardware and software systems.

Now, it is actual situation to reflect what human´s destiny is in the highly robotized society. Reorganization of the labor market is in front of us. For example, we can just ask, what China and India will do with the on-going robotization process?
Bohemians are very different compared to bohemians. Bohemians are not as obedient as robots. An obedient worker is still the ideal employee compared to the bohemian workers. Bohemian employees are expected to be more sick leaves compared with the robots. Robots need just technical maintainers. People need more extensive support services, for example, occupational health services and holidays. Robots do not go crazy. Robots can also work on weekends. So robots are having a lot of advantages compared to the bohemian people.

In the robotized society leadership, management and strategies will change significantly. The term “singularity” was coined by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes of the singularity. Especially people’s own self-management strategies and models will be important issues. The big challenge of post-modern societies is the thorough preparation of the fact that robots are superior workers compared to humans. We can reasonably argue that in the conditions of robotization, people should become even more human, unique and special. Man cannot survive in the competition with robots in other way than by highlighting her/his own special human characters.

Actually all the humans will face a strong pressure to be more bohemians, very special persons. A bohemian robot is a future vision, which is not so easy to engineer or re-engineer. Avoiding becoming an average is a big challenge for people in the robotized industries and business life. Always some of the medium must be matched. This problem will remain.

A bohemian robot is less likely to be the future mission that a robotized bohemian. Actually both “robot” missions are still challenging. We can expect that in the futures there will be all the variations of robotization.

And machine intelligence, a product of human design, will be far more intelligent than its human creator. Thus, there will be bohemians, robots and robotized bohemians and bohemian robots. How long this process takes, is still an open question.

Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means, very probably resulting in explosive super-intelligence. Singularity expert and scholar Raymond Kurzweil notes that the expected milestone year will be 2045 in terms of when he expects computer-based intelligences to significantly exceed the sum total of human brainpower.

Kurzweil predicts also that silicon-based life forms with the thinking capacity of humans should start arriving on the scene around 2029. This technological forecasting estimate is based on Kurzweil’s theory of “time and chaos,” which suggests that evolutionary time is accelerating. To sum up, there are very good reasons to think the future of robotized society. The bohemian alternative is one way to create counter forces and alternatives for a robotized society.

In philosophy authenticity is a technical term in existentialist philosophy. The term of authenticity is also used in the philosophy of art and psychology. From this perspective it is easy to connect to bohemian culture. Most people keep the bohemians as people with high level of authenticity. Why?

One answer can be presented by philosopher Charles Taylor, who argues in his book “The Ethics of Authenticity” that all humans have a natural feeling to tell the difference between right and wrong. Taylor discusses in his famous book about the big idea of getting in touch with your inner self to find your true self identity. In the life shape of human beings people try to keep touch with their inner true self identity. Inner virtues are crucial for the ethics of authenticity. Today modern psychology views authenticity as integral to well-being.

Charles Taylor states that trying to listen to the inner-self may be very difficult because of own social dependence on others. If we continue to depend on other people, the voice of our inner nature will be drowned out and we become oriented un-authentically. We can lose ourselves and lose bohemian attitude. Also social pressures of middle-class culture or average behavioral norms can lead people to inauthentic ways of living. Heidegger in his later life associated authenticity with non-technological modes of existence, seeing technology as distorting a more “authentic” relationship with the natural world.

In conventional philosophical thinking, the conscious self is seen as coming to terms being in a material world and with encountering external forces, pressures and influences which are very different from, and other than, unique itself. Thus, authenticity is the degree to which one is true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character, despite these external social and cultural pressures. In the art an authentic signature is telling to us about undisputed origin or genuine authorship. An authentic account is telling to us about accuracy in representation of the facts, about trustworthy work and about reliability. In bohemian culture authentic signatures and authentic accounts are issues of pride.

Being in touch with our inner voice is very important because it tells us what the right thing to do is. In bohemian culture this kind of attitude is very important, because in many biographies of bohemian persons the biggest struggles of them have often been internal struggles to be true to one´s own personality and character. Often a lack of authenticity is considered to be bad faith. Even an unpleasant truth is valued in bohemian culture.

One of the greatest problems facing such abstract approaches like authenticity is that the often culture bound. Objectivity of one´s inner voice cannot be evaluated easily. Maybe that is a reason why bohemian people are often seen as ultra-subjective and ambient persons seeking ultimate freedom. On the other hand bohemians are seen as real and original persons, not playing social role games. Inside bohemian culture, non-authenticity or un-authenticity are not appreciated.

A key element of creative work is storytelling. Today many media channels are interconnected. In the future media channels are even more linked and interconnected because of ubiquitous technologies, machines and robots. Trans-media storytelling is a technique of telling novel stories across multiple formats and platforms. Trans-media storytelling is also known in some communication contexts as multi-platform storytelling, cross-platform storytelling, or trans-media narrative. Ubiquitous technologies make this kind of trans-mediation possible.

Many platforms are today a part of social media. In the future they will be a part of ubiquitous media. Traditional media formats like TV, radio, video, game, film, magazine and newspaper are today facing new challenges of trans-media development. Already now many movies like “Year Zero” are trans-media projects. The new internet solutions and applications Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 will lead us to new kind of internet era. Especially for creative class and for journalism emerging trans-media is a big challenge, which changes work life and work culture.

Ubiquitous technology is not a neutral trend for societies. It will change many things, leading in an extreme form to technological singularity. As we know technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means, very probably resulting in explosive super intelligence. In this kind of techno society humans must develop new social positions, different from the positions of robots and super intelligent systems. We can expect that new kind of social and cultural structures will emerge.

Humans cannot compete with super intelligence, where already now new markets are in conditions of hyper-competition. Technology historically has fostered agility. Hyper-competition results from the dynamics of strategic maneuvering amongst competitors and from new technologies. Strategic maneuvering is more and more based on robotics and super intelligence. Many experts criticize these kinds of developments, especially in financial markets, where robotized gambling casinos without any rules (or not many rules) are possible to be run.

Many futurists say that it is very difficult or impossible for present-day humans to predict what a post-singularity world would be like. Raymond Kurzweil has discussed about this topic widely. However, we can expect that human beings must define their relationship to super intelligent systems and robots. Many complex ethical issues need answers.

The start of ubiquitous era means that we shall need new social innovations, which define new rules of societies. Also new business and technology innovations are needed to manage change in this kind of environment. We can also expect that the time of average is going to be over, because robots define the code of average from new technological pre-conditions. Accordingly, humans must re-define their positions from this novel perspective.
Ubiquitous technology development means also that the borders between real reality and virtual reality become vague. In real environments actual events, material substances and real places matter. In virtual environments virtual places, digital substances and autonomous events matter. The new trans-media emerges when these 6 key real and virtual elements will be linked by ubiquitous technologies and tech applications.

This is a future vision of global trans-media.

The trans-media includes both real and virtual elements. Authenticity will be a strategic key issue in the experience society, which is the next society after service economy. In the experience economy attention is scarce, time is limited and money is consumable. These are also the basic rules of trans-media.

There seems to be more questions than answers concerning our common future. Creative class members and especially bohemian persons are probably finding new answers more probably than the “average class”. One working hypothesis is that robots will destroy the “labor class” in the future. If this hypothesis holds, it means that population rich countries will face the era of mass employment. Also other smaller countries will have social and economic problems, because local and global markets do not work well. How much this process takes time, is another open question.

Humans have an obvious challenge: to be creative persons who find answers to open questions. People are forced to find the bohemian element of their minds.

Lifestyle is one of the most important things for today´s people. It is even more important for tomorrow´s people and youngsters. Lifestyle affects the way people work and live their leisure time. A key trend for change in lifestyles has been the individualization, or even ultra-individualization. Many people seek after distinctive way of life or very special work profile. Everyday life is a series of events with the meaning and intention. Human relations, clothing, patterns of consumption and entertainment are parts of lifestyle. Lifestyle affects person’s values, attitudes and general outlook on life. We select our lifestyle in order to enjoy our lives.

With a special bohemian attitude life can be more interesting and more enjoyable. We can understand our realities from the art perspective, not only from science or religious perspective.

People want to live their own lives so that they stand out from other people in some way. “Be unique or do not exist” is one behavioral rule of bohemian people. For bohemians the way of life is a key issue. It’s hard to imagine that bohemian persons would like to be part of a social establishment, or the bohemian expert settle for mediocrity. On the contrary, bohemian people shun mediocrity. They make themselves look like the operating environment, very personal and tailored for very special cultural rules. They are thinking: The more special – the better; the more strange – the better. In competitive urban environments many experts are talking about the Warhol economy, where bohemians drive creative industries like fashion, art and music. The cultural scene of New York is an arena of trendsetters and emerging trends.

Bohemian is a word developed in the 1800s in France. This generalized term describes many artists, creators and writers, who spend their unusual and irregular life. One Finnish poet and legendary rock musician Juice Leskinen described this kind of life style by writing a bohemian note: “I received a tattered life”. He really did it.

Originally the word meant the Bohemian Czech historical region of Bohemia population. Original Bohemian artists resembled the French view, wandering gypsies, who lived outside of the established social practices, and who were uninterested in conveying conventional circuit disapproval. Bohemian lifestyle is exceptional, avoiding traditional parties and the public acceptance. Often they have sharp contradictions with conventional political views, beliefs and opinions. Bohemian are having typically quite liberal sexual activity, non-material, very, very modest lifestyle and often living in voluntary poverty. In addition, a bohemian culture is a kind of “romanticism of misery.” Bohemians often make virtue out of necessity.

In history, typical bohemian lifestyle cultures have been avant-garde, the culture of the Beat-generation, Goth culture, hippie movement, liberalism and French Moulin Rouge. For example, avant-garde (referring to “advance guard “) refers to people or works that are experimental and a violation of the established trends of their time. The word is used especially in the fields of visual arts, film, literature and music in the context of new trends, but also for any new paradigm, for example when talking about culture or the novel political sphere.

The concept of avant-garde has become a topical debate on the fate of modernism. Bohemians are avant-garde persons in their lifestyle. For bohemians – the average has always been over.

Avant-garde artists and people are sometimes combined with street art, graffiti, or with anti-trends, wild cards and the ground-breaking new emerging issues. However, avant-garde is not a single art movement such as surrealism and cubism, since important concepts are constantly changing over time. Some of the avant-garde strategy of action is publication of manifest/s. It is usually a series of strong statements expressing the direction of movement of artistic ideas and intentions, and what the opposing advocates. The manifesto can be one key achievement of the artist or artist team achievement. Provocations are important part of the bohemian communications. Manifests are underlining new forms of cultural expression. Looking for new means of expression was almost willful in all artistic fields of avant-garde. Teenagers are often having bohemian sub-cultures because they like provocations.

Often the big idea is polarized and manifests to the publication of a major fuss as possible “fanfare”. Management of art and cultural creative industries is more demanding than conventional business branches. It is close to innovation management, but underlining art and aesthetics as key issues of management. Organizations wanting to attract bohemian personalities and creative thinkers need to emphasize a strong commitment to excellence and artistic integrity to be successful beyond the short term. Often great world class artists are working outside the establishment and the major system. For example, great film maker Woody Allen wants to work outside big film studios. He seeks actively distribution in the USA and Europe as a precursor to securing financing to see his art and film projects to fruition. Artistic ventures are sometimes very controversial and provocative. Sometimes artists are very focused on non-profit management organizations and do not want to be “Wall Street capitalists”.

In the 20th century it became very clear that the avant-garde did not fit in the totalitarian societies. Bohemians are not “fitting in” to totalitarian cultures. The German Nazis did the Bauhaus art school and thought it impossible to operate all of the modernist trends of “decadence of art.” Also Soviet Bolshevik repression of the century was an impassioned avant-garde. Spanish philosopher and essayist Jose Ortega y´Gasset says that the immediate effect of every avant-garde is that it creates its own top-level elite. He said that avant-garde creates obscure phenomena to divide audiences who understand and those who do not understand the new genres of avant-garde. This cultural gap does not follow any political or economic lines. There is also trans-avant-garde, which means the ultimate avant-garde border, the other side of the art. This “other side” is very interesting zone for bohemian artists and scientists. This kind of trans-avant-garde culture is having many impacts on economy and politics, when political and economic agents cannot trust in existing cultural structures and organizations. Trans-avant-garde is a vital source of wild cards of our times.

Avant-garde is key concept of bohemian culture. There have been artist forms of avant-garde. Such artist avant-garde movements have been avant-garde-jazz, cubism, Dadaism, futurism, impressionism, expressionism, abstract expressionism, modernism, surrealism and so called Zaum movement.

Another key concept of bohemian culture is activism. Activism is a policy of direct action. The concept of citizenship or civic activism means a national public functioning of society, such as the actions of different associations. Activism can be profiled as a case for or against an issue. A citizen, who actively works either independently or in a group pushing something, is often referred to as an activist.

Activism is receiving public attention in forms of demonstrations and civil disobedience. Change activism includes campaigning, lobbying, publications, seminars, and non-formal co-operation with policy makers. Civil action is framed by non-governmental organizations and movements, which bring in the same way-minded people together, organize, and organize their activities and act in some forms.

Today, Internet activism has moved to the virtual networks, and, is has taken new forms of web logs and wikis. Internet activism is today having a dynamic nature of trans-media and it has challenged both the traditional policy making and the old established media, and it has created a new and alternative publicities as well as exposing the politically sensitive information that traditional media has not been able to “find out”. The attention economy or experience economy are the key strategic arenas of bohemian tribes and individuals.

Yes, we want to be free.Yes, we want to create.Yes, we want to do what we feel passionate about.

And we are many.

Change starts never as a water-fall. Change starts from small bubbles. It emerges from those tiny movements in grassroots. From a susurrus in the willows.

Microtrends. Weak signals. Weak connections. Seeds of change. Signs of a new era where humansize is the new economics.

People want to become who they are – who they were born to be. They want to live, work and act like the Bohemians. Free and creative.

They want to win with their own unique talents and follow the mission that strikes a chord with their values. They want awesomeness instead of strongholds.

The New Bohemians are the future, they invent the future.

Bohobusiness is a blog. It will grow into a book. Boho is a new way to look at business. It is an eyeopener and a ticket to the outside of the box. Boho shares a new visions how a world, where the Bohemian attitude is the key to excellence, looks like.

The authors Jari Kaivo-oja “The Academic” and Cristina Andersson “The Bohemian” are experienced in studying the future and in creating ideas, inventions and innovations.

Jari and Cristina will meet the gurus, the leaders, the artists, the influencers who have the Bohemian code in their DNA. And they will share their knowledge, ideas and wisdom to transform the Bohemian energy into a winning business.

They also want to communicate with you. You are warmly welcome to comment the blog, follow Bohobusiness on Twitter or join the conversation on Facebook.

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What is life?

It is the flash of a firefly in the night.It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.It is the little shadow which runs acrossthe grass and loses itself in the sunset.– Crowfoot, chief of the Canadian Blackfoot tribe

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..in order to maintain your Bohemian status, you must walk to the beat of your own handmade drum...